'Outlander' series stands test of time

Diana Gabaldon's "The Fiery Cross" is in bookstores

Author Diana Gabaldon on her writing: "Look, pick it up, open it anywhere and read three pages. If you can put it down again, I'll pay you a dollar."

By Michele Dula Baum
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- Whatever you do, don't call Diana Gabaldon's books historical romance. Oh, there's history to be sure, not to mention quite a bit of romance in Gabaldon's wildly popular five-books-and-counting series of novels, which began with the publication of "Outlander" in 1991. But there's so much more.

Yes, the heroine, Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, is a spunky English beauty whose life has seen its share of woe and war, and the hero, James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, is a swashbuckling, outlawed 18th-century Highland laird. But Claire, a Royal Army nurse, was born in 1918, and the war she's lived through was fought with panzer tank divisions, B-29s and Fat Man and Little Boy. Jamie's battles are Claire's forgotten history lessons.

Claire travels in time. And while she and Jamie do fall in love, their story is not so much the stuff of sighs and moans (well, not just that anyway) as it is a grand adventure written on a canvas that probes the heart, weighs the soul and measures the human spirit across 10 generations. These are genre-bending novels, and that's just one of many reasons that people read them. "Historical romance is not what I write," says Gabaldon. "I've always called them historical fantasias."

Perhaps it's only coincidental, but the interview takes place during a Canadian book tour, and Gabaldon is speaking by telephone from a hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia -- New Scotland.

"All romance novels are courtship stories, and I'm not really interested in that," says Gabaldon, a scientist by training and an avid reader whose natural affinity for storytelling began to blossom in a CompuServe writing forum she thought no one would notice.

"Actually, I wanted to write a mystery," she says, adding that she has just finished reading John Le Carre's "The Constant Gardener" (Scribner, 2000) while on tour. "But mysteries have a plot, and thought I didn't know how to do that so I needed to practice."

That practice novel, "Outlander" (Delacorte, 1991) was the beginning of a saga that now has nearly five million books in print and includes a nonfiction volume called "The Outlandish Companion."

Released on November 7, Book Five, "The Fiery Cross" (Delacorte), already is in its fifth printing and has topped lists of bestsellers at superstores Waldenbooks, Amazon.com and Borders. It debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.

"The Fiery Cross" continues to chronicle the reunion of Jamie and Claire, their daughter, Brianna, and son-in-law, Roger MacKenzie. As the novel opens, it's 1770, and the family settlement in the North Carolina back country being strained by the inexorable pull of Revolution.

A couple of the volumes in the series top 1,000 pages, but the writing is praised as being crisp and descriptive, the action fast-paced. Critics say that even characters who only appear in a few pages are deeply envisioned. They belong. It's difficult for many fans to stop reading at chapter endings -- or anywhere else, for that matter.

Delacorte Press released "The Fiery Cross" -- the fifth book in Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" series -- in November.

"I say 'Look, pick it up, open it anywhere and read three pages. If you can put it down again, I'll pay you a dollar,'" she says. "I sold a lot of books and never lost any money."

When "Outlander" first was published, the author from Scottsdale, Arizona, had never been to Scotland. Still, many Scottish readers have said they believed her extensive knowledge came from experience rather than research.

She now has a vast library containing information on botany, 18th-century medical theory, geography, politics and social customs.

"Now I've got a fairly good grasp of the 18th century on what was common and what people thought," she says. "But I don't write in order. I write bits and pieces and sort of glue them together."

The story of Jamie and Claire will continue through to the conclusion of the American Revolution. "I know something happens at Yorktown," Gabaldon says with a deep-throated chuckle.

In between, there's a contract for two modern mysteries, which focus on an intrepid investigative journalist who lives in Phoenix and will star in what is tentatively being titled "The Red Ant's Head."

"Whenever anything bubbles up, I have to put it down," says Gabaldon. "I have bits and pieces all over my hard drive." Lucky for readers, she knows how to put those pieces together to make great stories.